Stock prices and corporate profits have surpassed their pre-recession peaks and the unemployment rate has fallen from 10 percent to 6.3 percent. Many Americans, however, are not feeling the fruits of this growth. In fact, 57 percent of Americans still believe the economy is in a recession.

We can quibble over numbers and the exact set of calculations, but the data I observe indicate that as of last year, we were wasting something like 86 percent of all the energy we threw at the economic process.